Navigating Politics as a Senior Leader: Avoid Being Undermined

Some people won’t have approval authority over your ideas, but they still seek to sabotage them nonetheless. Many times they’re doing this to advance their own interests.

Every organization suffers from some level of political intrigue. Whether it’s hoarding of resources, manipulative tactics, or passive aggressive behavior office politics distract your organization from getting things done. It also makes time at the office stressful and discouraging. Ignoring these dynamics can create risk for you, but you can take a productive approach to dealing with common political issues.

Avoid being undermined

Some people won’t have approval authority over your ideas, but they still seek to sabotage them nonetheless. Many times they’re doing this to advance their own interests. A lot of times these behaviors come from peers. When you’re advancing an idea, they throw every objection they can think of. They even proactively go and talk to other stakeholders to talk down your ideas. In some situations, they even speak poorly of you on a personal level.

When you’re dealing with these situations, remain fact based as you address their concerns in public. Bring forth your data. Let people know the logic behind your idea. That takes emotion out of the situation. If this person is campaigning against you, have a direct conversation with them. Let them know you’re aware that they’re speaking behind your back. Ask them to come directly to you with concerns instead of speaking to others.

I dealt with one of these situations personally. I was leading a big cost reduction project, and one of my peers was on the team. This individual shared personal text messages I had sent him with our COO. Needless to say, given the content of those text messages, our COO was not happy. They were not really flattering about the way he was participating in the project. The reason my peer shared this information with our COO is he was trying to curry favor with the COO and the CEO.

When I found out about this, I went directly to our COO. I apologized for the text messages. I said it wouldn’t happen again. I then sat down and had a very direct conversation with my peer. I asked him not to share that kind of information anymore. It was personal between me and him. Going forward, I tended to cut him out of the loop of information that I was sharing with other people, because I didn’t want to take the risk of him doing one of those end runs with another senior stakeholder.

When you find out someone is working at cross purposes to you, be fact based in addressing the concerns, and let them know you don’t appreciate the behavior. That’s one of the best ways to get that behavior to stop.

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